[johnvschmitt]

Too many times, I've seen people call ugly, immoral tactics like this as "growth hacking", which is polluting an otherwise positive culture.

Yes, it may be legal. Yes, it may grow your company. Yes, you may not have to pay any consequences until you're big enough to pay it off as a "tax".

But, no, it's not ethical, and yes, your investors will worry that you'll shamelessly cheat them at the first opportunity.

[ameister14]

Just because something directly harms the competition doesn't mean it's unethical or immoral. If it doesn't harm the stakeholders, it's fine with me. This isn't pouring waste into a river. This is going in and poaching the opponent's resources.

I also don't think it's inherently dishonest to do things like offer referral bonuses for getting the competition's drivers to join your service.

Were I an investor, where would I get the impression that they would shamelessly cheat me at the first opportunity? All they've done is improve the likelihood that the business I have invested in wins out.

[johnvschmitt]

Abusing the cancelation policy is the specific immoral act I'm calling out here. Offering employment invitations is fine.

But, often a company has very forgiving cancelation policies to be customer-friendly. By abusing those cancelation policies to do a DDOS-style attack is going to lead to adverse impacts on the ecosystem (less forgiving cancelation policies, drivers & riders wasting time chasing bogus reservations, etc)